/lit/ - Literature

>>15366

Book title: The Alchemist Paulo Coelho

>>13628

Most Jews barely practice Judaism as a religion. It's much more of an ethnic identity (no matter how little Israelite blood they have). Hence the term secular Jew.

>>12684

I do similar things when I'm angry at someone or something and I think I understand him. Let me try to explain why. You know we all act differently when we're angry, right? We try to find ways to cope with the anger. Well, for some people, the coping mechanism is to demonstrate to the world and all its people just how ridiculously annoying the person you're angry at is. And that can be done by impersonating what that person stands for in an exaggerating way. It's like mocking, but the difference is you normally mock people because they are inferior, laughable, pitiful, and you do that in a humorous way, while, in these cases, you mock people because you're furiously angry at them. It's not the kind of mocking you and your friends laugh at, it's the kind of mocking that makes everyone in the room go silent and look at you with slightly scared eyes and feelings of regret behind them.

>>13630

Lmao, what a bitter incel.

>>13673

are you jewish?

>>11568

thanks for the recs comrade

Pre-derp? What was mentioned, plus

all the Silver Age folk, including Gumilev and Averchenko.

Post-derp?

Lukin (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?178368) sadly few translations, and mostly German

Frei (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?237554) - at least some books are translated.

less "loud" tier, but good:

Gevorkyan (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?181477) - alas, the best isn't on the list.

Mikhailov (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?92761) - ditto

>>11546

And yes, Pelevin. Oh, here's a freebie on English:

http://pelevin.nov.ru/rass/en-zigm/1.html

His "must read" book is Generation P / Babylon.

>>12644

It's unlearnable. If you are an adult, It's too late.

Don't try.

>>15333

Ignore this retard.

>>12644

Reading and speaking a language are two very different animals, but one day you will want to speak, so it is very important to start now. Apps like HelloTalk allow you to do a language exchange. You teach your native language to someone who wishes to learn and they teach you Russian. If you really connect with someone, it's a great motivator, so don't give up if the first few conversations go nowhere. A paid Russian teacher is better but not always possible.

I like Benny the Irish Polyglot's blog for tips on learning languages. The most important thing by far is a little every day. 1% better each day makes you *3700%* better at the end of the year.

Just getting back into writing for the first time since I dropped everything for my chosen career, and really enjoying it now I'm at home preparing to squeeze out a baby.

Actually was wondering if this is a place to bring up an idea for a YA novel and see what people think; I like the idea of releasing for free the first installment of a would-be drama series that'd gently introduce teens to an increasingly dissident worldview as the main character grows up. Plot based around a high school girl who gets a development deal with a record company (Lorde-style), exploring her premature entry into an adult world, and slowly introducing (among other things) shit like predatory male feminists, professional victims in entertainment criticism/journalism, the anti-intellectual nonsense in modern humanities departments, etc. etc.

Besides that, I've got a lot of my own coming-of-age experiences to draw on now I'm old enough to reflect, and I like the idea of writing the kind of stuff I wish I'd come across as a lost teenager.

Wonder if it'd get any traction in online circles, as the kind of thing that wouldn't see the light of day in mainstream publishing?

Tend to think the problem with growing dissident political movements is that we have so little cultural output in spite of a growing audience for it and an urgent need for it.

>>15318

You should have her enter the glittery world of music production, but slowly realize there is an underworld of sex trafficking that leads her on a wild chase of pizza parlors in the flight for her life as she ends up bringing down an old order alien species that has evolved to look human, but secretly controls the world with big noses.

>>15316

there's literally a writefag thread three threads over, why make this?

>>15319

Interested to hear your definition of 'should'.

What exactly did you like about it?

>>15327

He explains what it means for literature to genuinely explore themes by testing moral/ethical hypotheses, so that a book can have real moral meaning without the author sperging out on a blatant rant. Frustrating that people see the title and assume he’s advocating for Goofus-and-Gallant preaching; I think he’d agree that that’s the problem with morally childish/incoherent award-bait lhat’s now called ‘socially important’ (The Handmaid’s Tale etc.), when compared to texts that are complexly constructed to explore truth rather than present a predetermined morality play. I'd never heard this fully articulated before, although I felt the same intuitively.

He argues that an author must have the moral/intellectual humility to embrace being proven wrong, and commit to ruthlessly honesty, rather than merely seeking to prove himself right. This is a larger point about what it means to be intellectual/scientific/philosophical that applies to so much in life.

Gardner repeats his core thesis a bit and I would suggest skimming towards the end if it feels like you’ve heard everything he has to say. Still, there are also excellent use of examples of what he’s talking about, especially when discussing thematically vacuous but popular/critically acclaimed trash, and comparing it to the best of literature.

What’s most inspiring to me as someone who wants to write, and not just read, is he shows it’s remarkably simple to uncover real human truth if your sincere goal is to be true-to-life (rather than true-to-preexisting-belief-system) even and especially when following contrived scenarios to their (socially) logical conclusions. And yet it’s clear how this is increasingly rare thanks to pretty blatant conceptual regimentation by our self-appointed cultural gatekeepers (plus readers/writers have less and less literary appreciation/ambition, likely as a result).

It’s a welcome antidote to the morally relativistic and nihilistic streaks in modern culture, especially that most obnoxious strain which preaches intractable relativism while simultaneously declarinPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

You are a redditor.

>>15323

You forgot your image file, fren.

>>15310

>I think the standards of it, like rhyme schemes and couplets and sonnets are retarded and antiquated

Well, congratulations for being an untermensch. I suggest listening to some of Elizabethan writers' and Shakespeare's works, particularly his poems to get a grasp at the power of antiquated poetry.

>that all the good poetry is already written or will be written by better men than me anyways.

Don't let your memes be dreams. See if you believe that, then you'll never write anything worthwhile. Be like Kierkegaard, or Hitler; the former believed that he was going to do great shit and passed out on a girl whom he loved. Hitler was a impractical dreamer in his youth, as Kubizek attests.

> As for journalism, I know nobody interesting, and likely never will, and most journalism is, nevermind, 100% of journalism is written by cuckolds or moral relatavists. It seems like the ONLY worthwhile writing is HIT PIECES

Then go with satirical works; read some satires to get a feel of how to do it; hell, read some of Wyndham Lewis as he took other people's works and melted it down and reworked it to his tastes.

Is it really writers block if you haven't actually started?

I use goodreads so I can showoff my high iq books that I read to my peers.

I do use but really it provides no real value to me other than my ingrained engineering behavior to spreadsheet/catalog everything I can. I like the ability for a starred rating system. I do this to music/albums I listen to and it is nice to shuffle music based on five stars, obviously doesn't apply here..

Maybe I need to stop using goodreads.

who?

>>15168

Tried building some personas on there but I don't care what people think and venting my opinion on things is boring. #SEO bullshit

I stopped using it when some insane harpies started stalking me because they thought I was the author of Behead all satans.

>>15168

>and it wouldnt let me just add books without reviewing them

You know you can just not fill the review section out, right?

>>15200

/thread

>>15202

You could print out pages.

>>15219

or you can buy a book

>>15196

This is very concerning. I'm not even a heavy bookfag, and I can tell you that both posters have no comprehension of higher concepts in total. A book can contain a large picture of information that extends a deep understanding of the writer's mind. This cannot happen with snippets of facts. They look at knowledge as a bunch of puzzle pieces. Ignoring the large painting as the author's whole concept. Sometimes it's not the pieces, it's the totality.

I assume they are talking about non-fiction school-related textbooks? Because what they're saying is true. There is no reason to own a book these days. I coasted through college by using the internet. I only bought a book in the first year because I was nescient and thought I needed it.

HOWEVER

I initially thought they were talking about fiction, which is why I cooked up a rant about how retarded they are, (especially the "ten pages, books are fluff" guys). If someone can confirm they're talking shit about fiction too I'll post it.

gen.lib.rus.ec has some mobi books.

>>15188

booksee.org has some stuff also, worth a search if you can't find shit elsewhere. Oftentimes the download speed is shit, though, and additionally the selection isn't huge.

I always use the IRC method for downloading books, you can usually get a book in every format.

>Download IRC client (I use Hexchat) and make sure its set up for receiving files

>Connect to IRCHighway for the server, the channel is 'ebooks'

>use the @search function to find your book. also works searching for an author. Search results will come in a .txt with full format etc information

>copy the entire entry for the download you want in the search results and paste it into the channel

>????

>Profit

You could always use Calibre to convert stuff like epubs into mobi. That's what I've been doing.

>>15194

Are such queries visible to everybody when you post them in the channel? I haven't used IRC for like 20 years for file-sharing so I forgot how it works.

>>15097

Given his lifestyle? Yes.

Didn't he constantly ask friends from money?

Didn't he go to a the funeral for his best friends father to ask for more money?

Didn't both his daughters commit suicide?

Wasn't he a terrible father, husband and friend by any metric?

Is there anything good he brought to the table that wasn't just ripped off of Hegel?

>>15097

Yes. There are plenty of anecdotes about Marx being an asshole in an entertaining book about him by Francis Wheen, which was well-received (I mean the general public, not Marxists).

>>15102

>He was radicalized after his foray into Hegelian dialectic

No. Hegel wasn't specifically left-wing per se, that's why the term Linkshegelianer exists (links=left), denoting a faction of Hegelians, not Hegel thought as a whole. And those guys were not the most radical thing either, just atheists writing stuff. Marx started out as a journalist in Prussia, writing from a rather reformist perspective. The government crackdown on the newspaper and other reformists lead to his radicalizing. It was the slaughter of the Paris Commune and his direct experience of having the state on his ass that made him cynical and extremist, not Hegel.

>>15190

>bad mathematical skills and lack of logical thinking

I don't think Marx getting gud at math would have changed anything about his world view and polemics.

>>15224

The stuff he ripped from Ricardo and gave a polemical spin to.

>>15247

You overused "Polemics" too much even though it was the correct term. C-, see me after class.

>>15248

Would underusing it too much be better?

>unrelated does anyone read on LSD?

I ask because although I have not and I am an.. experienced/frequent tripper for lack of a better term, I recently picked up and looked at a few pages during the tail end of a trip and I was frankly mesmerized by the crisp letters against the faded pages. It made a simple fantasy book seem like some sort of tome of ancient truths. Didn't get to reading however as I was quite tired.

All degenerates must die

Depends entirely on the book. Generalizing everything is reddit.

>>15206

Nice in joke. Unfortunately for you clever in jokes are now Reddit.

>>15207

There is no in joke. Thinking there are in jokes is reddit.

>>15039

>>>/reddit/

>>>/brainlet/

>>>/cuckchan/

>>>/brownpill/

>>14665

why do people whine about this so much? Like, is it that hard to just skip the intro and just read the story?

>>15195

>Like,

>>>/reddit/

>>>/facebook/

>>>/cuckchan/

>>>/gaschamber/

>>14981

>Unless you're reading something from BCE

Those can be shit too. I remember reading an intro to one of Aristotle's work, where the editor wrote at length at how enlightened we now are that we know there are no superior or inferior caste or races of men, and that women are equal to men, and that we've always been the one human race.

>>15197

He's still got a point. you don't have to read an introduction if you're not interested in it.